A. I hope you have already checked the permissions on the file. You can do that by selecting the file and choosing “Get Info” from the File menu. On the info pallet that opens you can click the triangle beside “Ownership & Permissions” to see who owns it and what the permissions are. To change the owner or permissions you can click the lock to unlock the pull–down menus and change the settings.
On the command line, you can also change the owner with the “chown” command and change permissions with “chmod”. Using the Get Info pallet can do the job for most users.
If you still can’t delete the file you may find that the “immutable” flag has been set. This flag is used to protect files from being changed or deleted. Open the Terminal, and navigate to your file. (You can drag the file into the Terminal to save from typing the path to the file.) To check if there is an immutable flag type “ls –alo” at the prompt. The “–o” shows the immutable flag and you will see “uchg” beside the file.
To change the immutable flag, type “chflags nouchg filename” to unlock it and “chflag uchg filename” to lock it.
Once you resolve the file’s permissions, ownership, and flags, you should be able to empty the Trash.
Q. For some reason my keyboard keeps acting up. When I type a slash I get a “’”. Other keys are wrong. Do I need a new keyboard, or can this be fixed?
A. Your keyboard is fine. The culprit is the International settings—a common problem with Macs sold in Canada. For some reason, when you install Mac OS X or buy a new Mac with Mac OS X installed and enter the name of a Canadian city, the folks at Apple assume that you’re using a French–Canadian keyboard and the computer sets up a slew of Canadian preferences. The keyboard remaps the keys to match the French–Canadian keyboard, which has easier access to accented characters. The date formats sometimes switch to French as well.
To fix your problem I recommend that you change a few settings in the “International” pane in the System Preferences. Begin by going to the “Input Menu” tab and unchecking the “Canadian CSA” keyboard layout (holding “Apple” and “Option” will flip between keyboard layouts).
Once you fixed the “Input Menu”, visit the “Formats” tab and change the “Region” to “United States” unless you like the date and number formats that Apple has chosen. (Again, I have no idea where they get their information from!)
If you’ve purchased a new Mac, the setting may be unchangeable, but you can avoid this problem in the future if you buy another Mac or if you install a new copy of MacOS X. When asked for your city and province, enter the Canadian city where you live or work, but when the installer asks which keyboard layout to choose, select “United States”.
Q. I want to move to MacOS X but I have some SCSI devices that I need. I’ve heard that SCSI cards don’t work on Mac OS X. Are there any that work?
A. Your problem is a common one. There are a lot of FireWire and USB devices that make it hard to hang onto SCSI devices, Zips, Jaz drives, scanners, et al. But you may also have hard drives and tape drives that you need. Most users switched over to Adaptec cards when buying G3s and G4s. Adaptec does not support MacOS X and the drivers that Apple has included don’t work reliably. Other SCSI card manufacturers such as Orange Micro and FWB have either gone out of business or been acquired by other companies, so their drivers are not available.
I’ve recently had great success with SCSI cards from ATTO Technologies. Their ExpressPCI UL3S and UL4S are the only cards recommended by EMC Dantz—makers of Retrospect Backup software—and LaCie—manufacturers of SCSI tape drives. If you have a mission–critical application such as a Tape Library or a RAID, then you may want to get an ATTO card. Otherwise, I would take the money you would use for the card and invest in FireWire products.
Timothy Mitra assists companies in mastering information technology in pre-press, print and web design.
Do you have a question you would like answered by the IT guy? Please contact him at: E: tim@it-guy.com C: 416-278-8609